White Jade (The PROJECT) (24 page)

Chapter Thirty-
F
ive

Nick
was dozing when Johannsen nudged
him
awake.

"
One hour
, Colonel
. Pre-breathing in fifteen minutes.
"

Ronnie sat quietly. Selena had packe
d up her computer.
Carter
put
his
hand on her arm.

"
You ready for this?
"

"
I guess so. I
'
ve never jumped from this high before.
"

"
It
'
s the same but the air
'
s thinner, you weigh more with that pack and you
'
ll come down faster. The tricky part is compensating for wind speed and direction. But you know how to do that
. W
ith the GPS you
'
re not going to
miss the landing zone
. Even though we start high, we end high too. That makes it simpler. Just stay loose and you
'
ll be okay.
"

She nodded.

"
Free fall for five, then pull the cord.
Remember to snap your chin to your chest once you're out
and keep your hand on your reserve until your chute is deployed
.
Keep your legs tight together. The shock is pretty hard when the chute opens.
Remember
to land back from the balls of your feet."

Carter looked at his watch. "
We
'
ll begin pre-breathing soon.
"

"
Pre-breathing?
"

"
This high, w
e have to get the nitrogen out of our blood. If we go out there without pre-breathing, our own CO2
could
knock us out and it
'
s a long way down. Don
'
t worry, this is standard drill. I
'
ve been through it before. Besides, the oxygen makes you feel good. When we change over to the bottles we use in the jump, be careful not to breathe any cabin air. Only pure oxygen. Okay?
"

"
Okay.
"

"
Forty-five minutes.
"
Johannsen's voice sounded in her helmet. "Begin pre-breathing."

They put o
n
the
masks. Johannsen hooked up the plane
'
s oxygen supply and
they
began pre-breathing.
Carter
felt the old pre-jump feeling come over
him
.
He was always w
ired before a big jump
.
He
figured you could
double that for jumping into the biggest,
baddest,
highest and coldest mountain range on the face of the earth.
He
saw the tension in Ronnie, but he
'
d been through this before
.
He knew Ronnie was silently repeating the Blessing Way to himself, one of the Navajo ritual traditions.
Carter
wasn
'
t worried about him.
He put his
hand on Selena
'
s shoulder and felt her relax, just a bit.

Another typical day in Special Ops,
he
thought,
except
now I'm
a civilian, so what
the hell am
I doing here?
He
noted the mind chatter and shut it down
.
The oxygen was kicking in and
he
felt clear and strong.

Johannsen
'
s voice crackled in
his
helmet.
"
Ten minutes. We
'
re going to depressurize now. Change over to your personal oxygen.
"

Nick
felt the change in the hold and
his
ears popped. The plane was slowing down and banking through what had to be mountains outside.
His
altimeter read
twenty-one
thousand feet. Most of the peaks in this part of the
Himalayas
were a lot higher than
the
plane
. He
knew
the
wingtips were only a small mistake away from disaster.
He
hoped like hell the pilot was enjoying flying between them.

"
Five minutes. We
'
ll
open the doors
at two minutes. Weather says
very
strong wind, watch yourselves. The vehicle goes first and then you three. What order?
"

"
I
'
ll go first, then Selena, then the Gunny, here.
"

Johannsen gave
a
thumbs up.
"
Roger, that.
Two second intervals.
"

The plane climbed.
The doors swung open and a blast of frigid air sucked away the little warmth of the cargo bay. The airmen got ready to dump the Humvee.
T
he wind buffet
ed
the fuselage.

"
I hope we land near that sucker.
"
Ronnie
'
s voice crackled in
Nick's
helmet.

"
These guys are good. They
'
ll put it right on the money.
"

"
Set your altimeters at twenty-three thousand.
"
Johannsen
'
s voice came through
the
helmet.

They
moved to the
opening
. T
he engine notes changed as the pilot throttled back and the big plane leveled and slowed again.

"
Get ready,
"
Johannsen said. A green light flashed and the pallet with the Humvee disappeared
into the Himalayan night
. Johannsen held up his arm for an instant, threw it forward.
Carter
leapt into
nothingness
, arms spread wide.

Chapter Thirty-
Six

The chute opened clean and hard.
He
looked up and
saw
two chutes blossom above. The plane was a
dark
arrow
turning
against the night sky.
They
were on
their
own.

A three-quarter moon spilled pure, silver light off the sharp peaks of the Himalayas
. T
he snow-covered mountains
gleamed
in a
shifting
tapestry of light and shadow that stretched beyond the horizon. In the distance, Everest and
Annapurna
grasped at a deep, black sky glowing with stars.

T
he wind
was bad. C
ontrol
was
difficult.
He veered off course,
checked
the
GPS, made a correction.
His
altimeter read seventeen thousand feet.
Carter
looked for the Humvee and saw the chutes below, far to the right, almost down.

Sixteen thousand feet and the ground was coming up too fast.
He
worked the lines and
headed for a flat area. A
strong
gust made
him
sheer left
. He
overshot the spot
he
'
d picked out
and
came down
hard
in an area littered with boulders
.
The shock ran up
his
bad leg and right into
his
spine like electric needles.

He
lay for a moment
as the chute tried to pull him across the rough ground
. The pain was like a knife in his back. He
wondered
if
he
was going to be able to get up.

It wasn
'
t a good start.
He got to his feet
and
a
nother
bolt of p
ain stabb
ed
his
back and radiat
ed
down
his l
eg.
He struggled with his chute against the gusting wind.

The ghost
ly
moonlight lit the uneven terrain in shades of gray and blac
k
. P
ools of deep shadow
lay
among the rocks
.
He
limped back toward the drop zone. Selena
was
pulling her chute in about a hundred yards away. When
he
got there, she took off her mask
. She
took a deep breath of the thin air.

"
That was tricky, that wind…Nick, you
'
re limping.
"

"
It
'
s nothing. You see Ronnie?
"

"
I think he came down over there.
"

She pointed at a low rise as Ronnie came trudging over it.
They
high-fived. Ronnie winced.

"
You okay?
"
Nick
asked.

"
Just a shoulder bruise. I came down a little hard. It
'
s no big deal.
"

Now
they
needed to find
the
vehicle.

"
Anyone see where the Humvee landed?
"

"
It
'
s that way.
"
Ronnie gestured over his shoulder.
"
I saw it coming in. Maybe a quarter mile from here. That wind screwed things up.
"

It took twenty minutes of scrambling over rough stones to find
it
.
Nick's
back hurt like hell. The pallet had
shattered
and the
Humvee
was half off onto the rocks. It
appeared
undamaged.
They
undid the lashings
. T
he engine coughed
and
started
.
Ronnie drove
a few feet away
.
They dragged a
camouflage net over the pallet and
chutes
, good
enough for the short time
they'd
be
t
here.

Carter
spread a map on the hood of the idling Humvee and got out the GPS.
His
back throbbed with steady pain.
He
braced against the side of the hood to take the weight off
his
leg.

"
We
'
re here.
"
He
tapped the map.
"
About
eighteen
klicks west of the mining town.
The road is down there on the other side of that rise.
Here
'
s the monastery that
'
s our principle landmark and here are the ruins we
'
re headed for.
"

"
That pilot knew his stuff.
"

"
Makes you feel good, doesn
'
t it? I could do without the moonlight, but it
'll
be gone soon. We
'
ve got around s
even
hours until dawn. With luck we can reach the ruins before light and get under cover. I
'
m going to call in.
"

A
coded burst to Harker
let her
know
they
were down safe and moving toward the objective.

"
Ronnie, you drive.
"

He
pointed to a spot on the map where a valley wound its way in
to the mountains
, before
the
road reached the Gurugem monastery.

"
We
'
ll cut north before we get too close to the building
and
head straight for the ruins.
"

They
put
the
packs in back and climbed in.
They drove off the hillside and onto the road. It
was in good condition, gray and flat in the moonlight.
The Humvee vibrated as they drove.

Ronnie said, "Steering isn't real good. Something might have got bent when the sled came down."

"Not much we can do about it."

"Nah
, we're still making good time. But I wouldn't want to push it."

Now all they had to do was get to the objective and find a way inside.